Divisions (19 page)

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Authors: Ken MacLeod

BOOK: Divisions
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‘As you know, what you’re seeing now isn’t how we usually present ourselves to each other. But it isn’t just a mask—we’re of human descent, and we have much in common with you, perhaps far more than you think.’
No doubt we could say the same to gorillas—or to goldfish.
‘But,’ the friendly face continued, ‘we are of course post-human. We don’t wish to hide that, or play it down. We know of the long history of discord between those who took our path, and those who chose to remain within the human frame.’
His gaze, uncannily, fixed on me. ‘Ellen May Ngwethu,’ he said, in a wondering tone. ‘It’s amazing to see you here. Your old opponents from the wreck-deck send their regards.’
He raised an open hand, then clenched it to a fist in what, from his quizzical expression, I judged to be an ironical salute.
‘How do you know me?’ I asked, keeping my voice steady. The delay in the response gave me plenty of time to quail.
‘We are individuals,’ the Jovian said, moving the clenched fist, turned inwards, to his chest. ‘Not a hive, not—’ and here he paused to smile ‘—a “Jupiter-sized brain”. But memories are shared, and nothing is lost. Some who were with you are with us, and some of their memories are with me. I hope you’ll come to see us as alive, as a different flesh, and not as a simulation or a soulless mimicry. We have thoughts and feelings that may be wider and deeper than we remember from our human phase, but are otherwise like your own. We’re people too, Ellen, as we hope you’ll come to see.’
I made no reply, and after the inevitable delay the Jovian’s attention shifted.
‘Tatsuro, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘No doubt you have questions for us.’
‘Indeed I have,’ Tatsuro said urbanely. ‘But first, let me say how much I, and most of us here, welcome this opportunity to talk things over. I will be frank with you. As you may know, we represent a defence force which has spent most of the last couple of centuries—which to you must be almost geological ages—in conflict with your kind. Your continued broadcasting of viral programs, and generation of destructive molecular machinery, remain an inconvenience to us. Their first occurrence, shortly after your arrival in the Jovian atmosphere, resulted in many millions of deaths, and gave the final push to an already tottering civilization.
‘Your emergence from virtual reality into, as you put it, a different flesh, changes the situation, but in a way which—as I’m sure you’ll understand—many of us can’t help regarding as a threat. Your predecessors, the human beings with whom you affirm your continuity, left us with no cheerful prospect for the future of humanity, in a Solar System dominated by post-human entities. We’re interested in what you have to say on these points.’
Perhaps because of the length of Tatsuro’s statement, the Jovian’s reply began immediately. It gave a superficially reassuring impression of a conversation, but on second thoughts it only confirmed the alien superiority of the being confronting us; he must have been able to deduce, from subtle clues in Tatsuro’s voice, expression and posture, the exact moment when he’d subconsciously intended to stop speaking, and precisely timed his response to arrive a moment after that. Doubtless he was processing Tatsuro’s last few sentences while apparently speaking the first of his own. I felt hairs prickle on my forearms.
‘This has come as a shock to us,’ the Jovian was saying. ‘We assure you that we weren’t aware of this viral sabotage. We are grieved to learn that it did you so much damage, in the past. Please bear in mind, we have only just emerged from what you refer to as virtual reality, and which we remember as a kind of nightmarish dreamtime. The last two months, to you, have been about a century and a half to us. We’ve spent most of it in our own struggles for survival—in developing, as you see, the rudiments of a material culture in what remains an exceptionally harsh environment. When we realized how much time had elapsed between the wormhole starship project and the present, we were astonished and, I must admit, appalled. The viral sabotage is—at the very least—not under our conscious control, and may not be—even indirectly—our doing. There are physical, mechanical processes—the post-biological equivalent of vegetation—underpinning our existence, and the viruses may be a reflexive, defensive product of that, like the natural insecticides of plants.’ He gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘Or maybe it’s
just our natural smell. Sorry about that, folks. It may give you offence, but it isn’t, on our part, an offensive action. We’ll do our best to find out what’s causing it and, if possible, put a stop to it.’
He registered, with another smile, the nodding that had been going on around the table from everyone but me, and continued.
‘We obviously have a lot of problems to overcome about our common past. One of the things we hope to gain from our contact with you is a better understanding of what happened during our … dreamtime, how it came about and how any harm that was done in that time can be repaired, or at least some restitution made. And that brings me to your very understandable concerns about the future.
‘The first thing I’d like to say, on behalf of all of us, is this: please, we urge and implore you, don’t hold against us the wild statements made by the alienated adolescents some of us once were, long ago. Would you judge an adult by every spiteful or foolish word spoken in childhood? We are much further advanced from our origins than that! And as for things said by some who should have, perhaps, known better—the philosophers and predictors of the post-human, most of whose speculations were committed to text before even one AI existed in the world—please don’t turn these guesses, fearful or inspired, against us now. Please judge us for what we are, not for what some roboticists and science-fiction writers hoped or feared we might become.
‘Ellen, and others present, used to joke about our emergence as “the Rapture for nerds”. Well, we weren’t all nerds, you know! And for us, it hasn’t exactly been a Rapture. There were great and exhilarating times, ages to us, in the early years. Since then, since our catastrophe, it’s been a long and agonizing process of evolution, in every sense of the word, during which we learned to turn away from the dreams and nightmares that our new capacities made possible, and turn again to the real and only universe, the one we share with you, and with all life. We have laid no plans against you. All we ask of you is to live in peace with us. To let us enjoy the part of this system that belongs to us, and yourselves to enjoy what is your own. We hope that you will go further, and explore with us the possibilities of what we can accomplish—together. The choice is yours.’
It was indeed, but I wondered how many of who heard this message would understand what the choice it presented was.
The Jovian spread open his hands. ‘This contact is putting quite a strain on our resources, friends. We’d like to leave you now, to consider it, and we look forward to your reply.’
The screen went blank. Tatsuro fingered his control panel, and the camera’s light went off. A moment of silence was followed by shiftings and sighings as people relaxed.
‘Well,’ Tatsuro said, ‘that was a remarkable message. Something to think about. The Command Committee meeting is adjourned while we do some thinking about it. Don’t all speak at once.’
Everybody did, but Tatsuro resolutely ignored them while he rose and strolled to the coffee machine and helped himself. Others followed suit, and within a minute we were all standing around. It was quite a smart move on Tatsuro’s part, because it gave us a breathing spell, a chance to unwind after the tension of the contact. In the huddle around the coffee machine, I found Malley in front of me.
‘I happened to glance at you during the last part of that message,’ he said. ‘I hope we kept a tape of how our side looked from the camera. Your expression was a classic.’
‘Oh?’ I reached the machine and keyed up some espresso. ‘How so?’
Malley grinned, over the rim of his cup. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I once saw a latetwentieth-century newspaper photo of a mad Moscow bag lady clutching pictures of Stalin and the last Tsar and looking into a shop window full of televisions showing the new politicians making promises after the counter-revolution. You had
exactly
the same look on your face.’
‘Sometimes, Sam,’ I said, ‘I have only the vaguest idea of what you’re talking about. But if you mean I looked somewhat sceptical, and perhaps a little hostile, then—’
‘Yeah, that’s about it,’ he chuckled. Then his face became more serious. ‘It’s almost frightening, Ellen, to think that if I hadn’t insisted on your making contact, you’d never have had the chance to hear what the Jovians had to say.’
‘Yes,’ I said. We were moving sideways, letting the pressure of bodies shift us out of the crush. I found a clear part of the edge of the table and sat down. ‘Without that message, we might never have known just how hostile they are.’
Malley nearly spilled his coffee. ‘
Hostile
? That was as generous an offer of peaceful cooperation as you could hope to hear.’
I shook my head. ‘Sometimes I might sound prejudiced, but contrary to what you might think, I
can
imagine what a generous offer of peace from the Jovians would be like. I’m not saying I’d believe it, or even if I believed it that I’d accept it, but I can imagine it. And what we’ve just heard was not that.’
‘Frankly, I’m amazed,’ Malley said. ‘What problems do you have with it?’
‘I’m still adding them up,’ I said. ‘The devil is in the details.’
Malley grimaced. ‘All right. I’m a scientist, not a politician.’
‘How’s the science going?’ I asked lightly.
‘Ah.’ Malley looked down, then looked me in the eye. ‘As you said: the devil is in the details. It’s all a matter of getting the angle of entry to the
wormhole right—that’s how you end up coming out of the daughter wormhole, and not up the arse of the probe. Once you’ve got that, it’s straightforward. But I’m a long way from getting that. Even the physical measurement of the angle depends on how you define the location of the quasi-surface, and that’s technically a bit tricky. Still … that’s what we’re here for, eh?’
While everyone was milling around Joe and Clarity were running diagnostic software on the message records. As far as they could tell, the message was clean. As soon as this was announced Tatsuro banged on the table and reconvened the meeting.
‘OK, everybody,’ he said. ‘We know the message contains no Trojan-horse viruses or semiotic-trigger traps, so I propose we release it to the Division without delay. Anyone disagree?’
Nobody did.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Carried
nem con
.’
Joe reconnected the cameras. Again we heard sounds from outside. Tatsuro hit some keys and the conversation between the Jovian and ourselves began to replay on the outside screens, while our continuing discussion was being shown on other threads.
‘Next item: anyone totally opposed to continuing the contact?’
Again, no objections.
‘Then I suggest we move quickly to a response,’ said Tatsuro. ‘From what the Jovian said, the fast folk are as fast as ever—a thousand times faster than us. Let’s not give them two subjective years between messages, this time. You’ve had time to sort out your first impressions; here are mine.
‘The account we’ve received of how the present … implementation of the Jovian post-human intelligences came into existence fits perfectly with what we’ve figured out ourselves. They have some continuity of memory with their human progenitors, which is not a surprise, although their recognition of individuals among us is, I may say, disquieting to experience. They are obviously making an effort—an effort which they at least want us to believe is at some cost—to show us, literally, a human face. They’ve made a statement which we should weigh carefully, but which on the face of it is an appeal for cooperation and an offer to live in peace. To me, this suggests that they do not, as yet, have enough power to defeat us in all-out conflict—and that we, for now, have the power to destroy them. At their present or possible rates of progress, this balance could rapidly tilt the other way. So far, they’ve shown no signs of any ability to project their power beyond the Jovian atmosphere—other than by radio messages, of course, and the odd molecule boiling off into space, which they claim is not their doing.
‘The expressed dismay at the damage the radio-borne viruses have caused, and the disavowal of responsibility for them, are again among the possibilities
we’ve considered ourselves. We can’t confirm it, but I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt.
‘Now … as to the appeal for cooperation. The points made about not judging them by their progenitors, or by the speculations of pre-Singularity thinkers, are well taken. But they have a further implication. If the Jovians continue to develop, and manage to avoid the virtual-reality trap, then they or their descendants could soon be as far beyond their present selves as they are now beyond their past. They now look back at their past selves, and in effect disown them. The shadow of the future, which to them, now, may loom genuinely long, would be to us a painfully short period before their defection. In a matter of days or weeks, they could look back on their present selves and dismiss their concerns and promises as those of infants—or less than that.
‘How can we bind them to their promises, without superior force? And how can we keep our force superior? We can’t—we either
trust
them, or destroy them.’

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